Thursday, January 9, 2014

Motherhood- a personal choice of any women.

Recent judgement in relation with premarital sex by court in Delhi has sparked some debate about right of adults to choose their sexual partners, in India still there is a very strong connection between marriage and parenthood, specially motherhood. Actually I am little surprised by the court commenting on the morality aspect of the act rather than legal aspect, I don't understand why any court cares about what any religion says about anything? How things mentioned in any religion or religious texts are relevant legally? We also need to understand the effect of these type of judgements on our society, actually these type of judgements increase the bias against the people who don't follow these so called moral norms. One of the issue directly related with this judgement is issue of motherhood of unmarried adult women, this is a big NO in many societies (including India), people look down on unmarried pregnant women, they have to face lot of humiliation, their character is questioned and even their own family might disown them because of stigma and shame associated with this incident. It is almost difficult for them to survive with this label in most conservative societies. So the question is, do adult and independent women have right to decide about when and how they want to become mother (or pregnant) or society should decide it? May be this question is irrelevant or unnecessary for many but this is very important for many women who want to become mother, want to have honorable place for their kids in our society but can't find suitable partner with whom they can marry to satisfy that minimum criteria of marriage imposed on them by religion and society to become mother, this is very crucial question for all those working, independent adult women and we need to discuss this and find some practical solution.

Many independent, working women sometimes find really hard to find ideal life partner, who can really understand them and support them totally, this is all because independent and opinionated women is a recent phenomenon and not all men are comfortable with this, they want outgoing, smart and so called modern women but ultimately they expect her to remain within their control. It seems still our society is not ready for totally independent women, a women who can decide about everything related with her life. Even in today's world no organized religion gives fair and equal treatment to women, this is just because all religions are quite old and product of patriarchal society, because of this all of them are heavily biased against women and obviously we cannot use the standards used by all these religions today, this is true especially about issues related with women and their rights, at least I expect honorable courts to be careful about this. These type of judgments help to make already existing prejudice against women more strong, they even legitimize it, that's why we need to question them, debate them. Some issues like motherhood or homosexuality or casteism or racism might be non existent or non relevant for some people but for people directly getting affected by these issues it's a matter of great concern and as a society we need to be sensitive about their concerns.

Motherhood should be a personal choice of adult, independent women, every child should be legal and legitimate. Actually any adult should have right to decide about major things related with their own body and life. Marriage, choice of partner and motherhood are part of women's personal decisions and she should have total control over these things, definitely people around her can help whenever she needs or asks for any help, this can assist her to take proper decision but she should have right to decide what she want to do, I wonder how come any person with rational mind and common sense can oppose this? Why there is such a strong desire and desperate need to control women? Why some people are so scared with totally independent women, what's wrong with them? Women are almost 50% of our workforce, making them independent and strong is going to help us in building strong and vibrant society. It's always better to have society which is equally sensitive towards needs and concerns of every section, I guess everyone would love to live in this type of society. We all need to work towards it, at least people who believe in gender equality and oppose any kind of discrimination should work tirelessly towards achieving this goal.